Large datasets exist mapping associations between services and service providers across industries. Professionals in many different industries provide services to individuals. Details about these services are often stored in large data sets with loose associations. Moreover, as different industries become more and more complex, the professionals within those industries begin to focus their training and experience on specific aspects of their industry complicating existing classification techniques that are too broad to capture specialization. The professionals become skilled in specific, narrow topics at the expense of being less knowledgeable about other areas of the industry.
Determining which service providers offer a specific service or services can often be difficult and confusing. Traditional categorizations of professionals do not accurately indicate their specific expertise or the specific services provided. Most directories of professionals do not provide enough detail to describe the exact skill sets of various professionals in a broad industry.
Information related to provided services is often self-reported by the professional, and professionals will often exaggerate the breadth of their expertise. Some professionals can provide recommendations or referrals, but these can also be unreliable as the professional providing the recommendation or referral may not be knowledgeable about the best colleagues to perform the service. Moreover, it may not always be clear what exact services are required further complicating the ability to find an appropriate professional. There is an increasing need to provide meaningful insight into the services and expertise of specific professionals within an industry and an increasing need to provide data driven analytical techniques to associate services with service providers.
Over time, more and more data is becoming available describing characteristics of the actual services that have been provided by service providers. But there is a significant gap between the various types of data available and an ability to dynamically process that data in a meaningful way that provides a benefit to those in seeking a professional.
Some current systems relying on data uses simple counting of the number of times a professional has performed a particular service. But this approach fails if there is incomplete data for other professionals. This type of data may not indicate if the professional has performed the service more than those other professionals for which there is no data. Moreover, this type of analysis provides no indication of the quality of the service provided. Additional systems may rely on consumer provided reviews, but this type of data can often provide too little data to be significant and can often be skewed towards one or two individuals who had a particularly good or bad experience.